Tennyson

American  

[ten-uh-suhn] / ˈtɛn ə sən /

noun

1. Alfred, Lord 1st Baron, 1809–92, English poet: poet laureate 1850–92.

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Tennyson British  

/ ˌtɛnɪˈsəʊnɪən, ˈtɛnɪsən /

noun

1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 1809–92, English poet; poet laureate (1850–92). His poems include The Lady of Shalott (1832), Morte d'Arthur (1842), the collection In Memoriam (1850), Maud (1855), and Idylls of the King (1859)

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Other Word Forms

• Tennysonian adjective

Example Sentences

Soon settled in a mansion on the Isle of Wight, the once-depressive Tennyson found contentment in marriage, family and fame.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

In one passage of “In Memoriam,” Tennyson envisions the agony of his own death not in religious terms but in images drawn from biology:

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

“Was Tennyson ever young?” asks Richard Holmes at the opening of his superb biography, “The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

Tennyson was a genius, but he was no intellectual.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

An observer of the present day, who knew the Arthurian legend only from Tennyson and people of that sort, would have been startled to see that the famous lovers were past their prime.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White